Decision 1/CP.16, requests Parties aiming to undertake REDD+ activities, in the context of the provision of adequate and predictable support, to develop a robust and transparent national forest monitoring system for the monitoring and reporting of REDD+ activities. If appropriate, subnational monitoring and reporting of REDD+ activities is allowed, as an interim measure.

Decision 11/CP.19refers to decision 4/CP.15in providing the guidance for the establishment of national forest monitoring systems. The combination of remote sensing and ground-based forest carbon inventory approaches and the most recent IPCC guidance and guidelines should be the basis for estimating anthropogenic forest-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by sources, and removals by sinks, forest carbon stocks, and forest carbon stock and forest-area changes.

Decision 11/CP.19adds that a “robust national forest monitoring systems should provide data and information that are transparent, consistent over time, and are suitable for measuring, reporting and verifying anthropogenic forest-related emissions […] and [be] consistent with guidance on measuring, reporting and verifying nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties agreed by the Conference of the Parties”.

In recent decades, Brazil has advanced considerably its systems for monitoring forest cover, especially those covering the Amazon region. Deforestation data on clearcutting of forested areas in the Amazon biome is produced annually by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE for the acronym in Portuguese), through PRODES (Portuguese only), which has a time series starting in 1988.

In addition to PRODES, INPE has developed other systems to monitor different aspects related to REDD+ in the Amazon:

• DETER (Portuguese only): a real time deforestation detection system designed to provide valuable intelligence to inform environmental law-enforcement operations. It produces data on a daily basis and has a time series starting in 2004.

• DEGRAD (Portuguese only): a system designed to monitor forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon. Its time series runs from 2007 to 2013.

• TerraClass (Portuguese only): tracks the land use change in areas identified as deforested by PRODES, providing strategic information for land use related policy for the Legal Amazon region.

The Program aims to articulate and give greater coherence to ongoing monitoring efforts in the country, in addition to expanding the vegetation cover monitoring for all the Brazilian biomes up to 2018.